Conservatives and Social Media

Millennial voters do not get their information from the mainstream media. Many chose instead to get their information from social media. They use Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and even photo sharing mediums like Instagram and Snapchat.

To their detriment, Conservatives have been slow to utilize social media. The Left on the other hand, adapted almost immediately. Social media played a small, but significant role in getting out the vote for the 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate and now President Barack Hussein Obama.

The 2015 mid-terms changed that a little bit. Social media helped give Conservatives the House of Representatives and a bigger majority in the Senate.

However, many social media outlets are owned by liberal entrepreneurs. It has caused a tug of war between Conservatives and the outlets themselves.

This became clear when Breitbart contributor and professional provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter this summe. The only reason given was an incident involving Milo’s supporters from the Alt-Right trolling Leslie Jones (star of the recent Ghostbusters reboot).

Though Milo was not directly involved, he was the target of the ban. Twitter has only given vague reasons, but it has been suggested it involved Milo’s “Gays For Trump” event at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. The backlash was almost immediate with supporters tweeting #FreeMilo and decrying the unjust action taking by the social media outlet.

This amounts to one thing: censorship. It was firebrands like Milo that taught Conservatives how to use social media to challenge (and yes, humiliate) the Left.

Milo is not the only Conservative who has been affected by a social media assault. LinkedIn has only a few of Conservative “influencers” on their Pulse page. Facebook was accused of blocking Conservatives out of their trending news section. Vimeo and YouTube banned documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer’s recorded confrontation with faux documentarian Joshua Fox. Radio host Steven Crowder was assaulted with false copyrighted claims and was blocked from live casting on YouTube. Both of these last two incidents have since been resolved.

Meanwhile, these outlets feature liberal and even socialist commentators very promimently. Of course, that is their right as a private company, but then they also allow hate groups and terrorist organizations to have connections, videos, articles, and much more.

Campus Reform contributor Kassy Dillion set out to prove the bias against Conservatives on Twitter. After Leslie Jones struck back at Milo supporters by sending out a vulgar tweet, Dillion copied and tweeted it verbatim herself to prove the bias. What happened? Twitter temporarily banned her. The social media website relented after public outcry.

With this very obvious and glaring bias, the question remains, what can Conservatives do to counter this? The answer is simple: widen the influence. There are more outlets besides Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram. Having videos on these is great and I hope more channels and content creators get on board.

However, Conservatives also need to write for other outlets like LinkedIn, Medium, Blogger, and Reddit where representation is nonexistent, weak, or the contributors are not truly on the Right. Not only would this express relevance, but it would give visibility to Conservative values.

As the visibility builds for these authors, writers, contributors, and the like, so will their validity. It will become more difficult for these outlets to unjustly block, ban, or sabotage those on the Right when the social media tries to censor especially as more Millennials join the Conservative movement.

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(c) 2018 Jacob Airey. Plagiarism is not cool. Do not reprint the articles, essays, or original works without the express permission of the author.